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A Torah Anytime original series. [music]
Yesterday I had a flat tire. Not the
slow leak type, not a warning light for
2 months [music] type. The explosion
type, the kind that forces you to pull
over and crouch down and just stare at
the wheel [music] like it personally
betrayed you. And I'm sitting there for
2 hours waiting [music] for help,
thinking, "Really? this today. But as
I'm crouched there, something hits me
that this isn't really about a [music]
tire. It's about the way we move through
life. Because every one of us eventually
deals with flat tires in life. Every one
[music] of us will inevitably deal with
flooded basement and dead batteries and
broken boilers and leaking roofs and
that one thing that goes wrong that
suddenly hijacks [music] your mood and
your day and your perspective. And the
sad thing is that we [music] sometimes
let the one thing that isn't working
eclipse the 99% [music] that is. We do
this everywhere. Sometimes we get so
focused on the one thing our child can't
[music] do that we forget all the things
that they can do, their kindness, their
effort, their growth, their soul.
Sometimes we get so caught up on the one
small [music] thing that bothers us
about our husband or our wife that we
completely lose [music] sight of the
other 99% of who they are. Warm, loyal,
brilliant, funny, [music] loving.
Sometimes we let one flat tire in life
convince us that life is horrible and
everything [music] stinks and everything
is just filled with stress. when in
reality most of the time our life is
magnificent and sometimes [music] we
need to just slow down a little to
realize it. Judaism understood this
about human [music] nature a very long
time ago. Ever wonder why Hashem made
people age? Why do people slowly lose
energy over time? Ever wonder that? Why
don't people have the [music] exact same
energy of a seven-year-old until the day
they die? Why somewhere around [music]
our 30s do we slow down and we walk a
little slower and we move a little
slower and we [music] don't bounce back
the same way that we did? Almost every
other animal in the universe has the
same level of [music] energy and health
until right before it dies. Why is it
not that way with humans?
Well, believe it or not, [music] once
upon a time it was like that with
humans. The medish in Berius, [music]
it says that for the first thousand
years of world history, [music] human
beings lived with the exact same
youthful energy they had as a child
[music] until the day that they died. So
what changed? What changed was Avitz and
Yakov realized that this isn't going to
work. They realized that if we never
slowed down in life, we would never stop
to think. We would never [music] sit
with our children or our grandchildren.
We would never take stock of life.
[music] We would never notice the
million small, dazzling, beautiful
things in life. We would spend our
entire lives just running right past the
million that Hashem wants us to notice.
And so the mentor says that they did
almost the [music] unthinkable. Aram
introduced aging to the world. Davend
[music] for suffering. Yakov introduced
illness. that arthritis you have, you
can blame Aram. [music] That lack of
energy you have, you can blame Yitzluck
and Yakov. Why in the world would they
do that? The answer is that all three of
us saw [music] the same danger. That if
life moves too smoothly, if everything
always works, if we have the energy of
an 11-year-old in our 80s, if nothing
ever slows [music] us down, we run the
risk of missing the unbelievable
happiness right in front of us. The
smile of a grandchild, the warmth of a
spouse, ficta and brilliance of the
[music] tyra, the quiet miracles filling
our days. So, Hashem placed builtin
pauses into [music] life. Sometimes they
look like aging. Sometimes they look
like struggle. And sometimes they look
like a flat tire on the side of a road.
Not to break us, but to wake us up.
[music] To remind us not to judge our
lives by the one thing that's wrong, but
by the overwhelming 99% [music] that's
right. So, yes, yesterday my tire
exploded and no, it wasn't [music]
convenient and it was annoying. But
today, I'm grateful it was just a tire.
Grateful that 99% [music]
of my life keeps running with Hashem's
unimaginable
even when I forget to notice. And maybe
that's the fire. Learning not [music] to
let one broken wheel convince us we're
living a broken life. Learning to see
the blessing even when life sometimes
taps the brakes.
